North-South Conflicts in Intellectual Property Rights

Vandana Shiva, Peace Review, 12:4 (2000), 501-508

Western intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes have emerged as major
instruments of North–South inequality. Not only do they block technology
transfer, they facilitate piracy of the indigenous knowledge and biodiversity of
Third World countries. They could, if not revised and reviewed, make northern
countries into the monopoly owners of knowledge, including knowledge that has
evolved cumulatively and collectively in indigenous cultures, selling it at high cost
to already impoverished and indebted countries of the South, pushing them
further into poverty and debt. Since the majority of the people in the South
depend on biodiversity for their livelihoods and survival, the hijack of their
resources and knowledge through IPRs is the hijack of their lives and livelihoods.